Alois Lichtsteiner paints pictures that appear at first sight to be nonfigurative. His studies of color spaces are contrasted with natural gray areas and the gray zones of our perception of nature, artistically reflecting reality without foregrounding the figurative; these works are about painting and the visual exploration of perceptual phenomena. Lichtsteiner writes: “The body of the picture is a receptacle of memory and experience. The skin of painting encases the surface of this body.” In the paintings and woodcuts of the exhibition, “weisse Nacht” (white night), transitions between snowcovered mountainscapes and the sky are blurred; the surroundings seamlessly disappear into “nothing” or rather everything. Viewers are subjected to the uncertainty that comes with losing the sense of time and orientation that prevails in the safety of concrete reality.

The publication accompanying the exhibition is an interdisciplinary discourse on “night”, the theme of the 2011 Lucerne Festival. In addition, Lichtsteiner erects accessible bridges between his painterly interpretation of the world and our perception suspended in the intermediate world of his pictures.